Sample of literary figures
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Tom Ripley
Male
He is charming, handsome and cultivated as well as being a ruthless serial killer and psychopath totally lacking in empathy, the main character in five classic thrillers by Patricia Highsmith. Thomas ‘Tom’ Ripley became an orphan when he was five years old, and was brought up by a callous female relative. He later marries the wealthy Héloïse Plisson, but nevertheless has successfully continued his criminal career.
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Archie Goodwin
Male
The voluminous private detective Nero Wolfe, created by Rex Stout, rarely leaves home. He lets his secretary, Archie Goodwin, do the legwork, and Goodwin is not a bad detective either. He is good looking, polite, tough when he needs to be, quick-witted and he can memorize interrogations word for word. He is usually the narrator in the Nero Wolfe books. His employer would never have been able to solve crime as elegantly as he does without him.
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V.I. Warshawski
Female
Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski is a hardboiled private detective in Chicago. She often rescues people on the margins of society and she often she rails against crooked politicians, bigotry, and toned-down political scandals. Her father is Polish and her mother was Jewish – and she has more lovers than she has friends according to the author, Sara Paretsky.
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Kate Brannigan
Female
Kate Brannigan is a private detective at Mortensen & Brannigan in Manchester. According to the author, Val McDermid, she dropped out of law school. Brannigan is a tough, quick-witted, independent woman with a great deal of integrity. She refuses to move in with her music journalist partner who lives next-door. She never gives up a case, not even when all the odds are against her.